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Source: Australian, with teenager. 1. It's not a ban on using social media, it's a requirement for age verification to create an account. This only limits usag
by codebje 1mo ago
Source: Australian, with teenager.
1. It's not a ban on using social media, it's a requirement for age verification to create an account. This only limits usage on the few platforms that force an account to do anything.
2. The technical controls platforms implement are, unsurprisingly, generally quite weak. Kids are crafty enough to circumvent them, and share how freely.
3. Wannabe-influencer parents just create accounts for their kids, making the circumvention trivial.
4. There are no consequences for using a social media account while under 16.
I think the final point is the main one, though. By design there's no mechanism in place for the government to take any action if a kid gets onto social media, only if a platform fails to implement age checks that satisfy the legislation's criteria. So platforms all implemented tokenistic age checks. Platforms don't care, or need to care, if they get bypassed. The government doesn't care.
If I were a more suspicious man I'd say that either the point was never to reduce the use of social media by kids in the first place, or it was well intentioned but railroaded into toothlessness by lobbyists.
- lifestyleguru 1mo agoIt's impossible to keep kids out if there is a non small amount of parents sucking their kids into social media.
- anenefan 1mo agoThe big issue that media and the like are careful not to mention lately were the algorithms social media refused to do anything about when asked to by the govt when the public complained -too hard or whatever- back 7 or 8 years ago. At the time parents were discovering some social media [1] was funnelling children into darker areas [focus teenage anxiety] for profit. Though bullying was one of the concerns for children, the under 16 ban means any smart social media company, with an understanding some kids will still use social media just like under age unlicensed driving still happens, the last thing the company needs is ending up in the courts due to the bad algorithms or piss poor moderation. With the ban it should be assumed, for they (social media and their friends) seem to be claiming their pii scraping and analysis is near hopeless, they will have preemptively removed the troubling algorithms at the very least - less they find themselves in the courts due to use by an under 16 child that was groomed to a dark place, without a leg to stand on. The ban also means parents and teachers alike have the means to make children put their phone down or away and pay more attention to real life things. [1] One in particular iirc though.